Probert gets his act together, maybe we helped, and dancing after midnight.

By Tony Attwood

When we heard it was Probert who was doing the Arsenal game this weekend there considerable debate within labyrinth of Untold corridors around the simple topic: how should we cover it?

If we were a newspaper or at all pompous we’d call it an “editorial conference”. And since we now do pomposity I can tell you that the result of the editorial conference was that we decided to run our pre-match articles by featuring the ref more than Arsenal, pointing out his past misdemenours and suggesting that Arsenal were playing the ref more than playing Norwich.

I felt that the approach was a bit too obvious – and that everyone would realise that the whole point of what we were doing was the equivalent of the crowd chanting at Probert, “We know what you are, we know what you are, Lee Probert, we know what you are”.

In other words we wanted him to know that we knew what the statistics about him said. (There are links to the build up articles at the foot of this piece).

We also wanted PGMOL to know that we knew and were making a big thing of his past performances.

As for the aim, that was simple: to get him to pay more attention to the laws of the game, and let Arsenal play.

And the mechanism, well that was simple too. We know that some people associated with PGMOL, and some closely associated with the referees, read Untold, and so with three articles which had considerable focus on Probert, the idea was that he might come across one or more of the pieces, and that he might feel this was the time to put in a more measured display.

As I say I thought our simple ploy was so obvious that everyone would see it and know what we were up to, but it is interesting reading the comments prior to the game that this was obviously not always the case.

Anyway, that was the idea. Now the fact that in the first hour at least Probert didn’t behave as he had done before, or at least if he did it was not so blatant, allowed Arsenal to play their game.

Of course it is perfectly reasonable to argue that the change in the Probertian method of refereeing was nothing to do with Untold, but rather was due to

a) coincidence, he just had a better game this time

b) a word from PGMO to the effect that he had not been up to standard in Arsenal games in the past, and that he should be more careful

c) the fact that in such a game he just couldn’t find ways of giving the advantage to Norwich.

Any of those could be true. And to be perfectly clear I must add that there is no suggestion here that Probert has been deliberately poor in his previous matches with Arsenal. Indeed there are at least two other explanations for his past behaviour:

a) Our figures could all be wrong

b) He’s just a poor ref, who always happens to favour Norwich and rule against Arsenal

Either way, he let the game run for quite a bit of the time, he didn’t give any bizarre penalties against us, he didn’t rule onside goals offside, he didn’t send Mr Wenger to the stands for kicking a water bottle, and by and large he reffed the game. Not necessarily that well, but he reffed the game OK.

As to the game itself, leaving the ground after the match my own feeling (and I think that of Drew too) could be summarised as per the opening words headline in the Observer report this morning:

“More please!”

Normally, I don’t have much truck with newspaper reporting, but for once the feelings expressed by Paul Doyle in the paper, and mine, are as one.

“Arsène Wenger’s men were wonderful, each of their goals a work of beauty. Norwich could not cope. Few teams could. The season is young but if Arsenal continue to attack with such regal aplomb, it will take a special side to oust them from the top of the Premier League.”

Two of the goals were beyond belief. I’ve not yet seen them on TV (the reason that Walter was asked to rush through a report last night was that he had to rush off to ref his own game, while after the drive back to the Midlands, I did a quick change to get to a party in Rutland. My friends there are Leicester supporters, and they were quite happy too and the party proceeded to the small hours).

.

But just from being there I can tell you we are back in the days of Henry and Bergkamp.
Consider this: Wilshere to Cazorla. Some quick passing with Giround, a flick with the heel of the foot, and suddenly Jack was several yards (or so it seemed) ahead of the defensive line with only the keeper to beat. None of the defensive line seemed to move. Jack scored. We looked at Probert and the linesman. Surely one of them would concoct an off-side out of this. Neither did.

We watched it over and over on the screens, and it got better every time. The cheer for the first repeat was as big as the cheer for the goal in real time. It happened so fast we couldn’t believe it.

“That was certainly one of the best goals I’ve seen in my time here,” said Mr Wenger. ” I’d go with that.

Flamini’s concussion caused problems – he had tried to play on but put through some poor passes and was clearly not all there, so we rearranged and allowed Norwich to attack, getting ready for the inevitable counter.

.

As we can now see, with Özil in the side counterattack are even more powerful. Norwich’s goal came after the second adjustment with Cazorla going off or Rosicky. Ramsey, Rosicky, Özil, we had a third.
Ramsey’s goal was one of supreme confidence. He had the ball, he went around one, two, three, or at least that is how it seemed from high above him looking down, and it was truly like him saying, “I saw Theo score one like this, now it is my turn.”

And it was.

We had 20 goal attempts, with 11 on target, and 16 minutes from Nic Bendtner during which he was cheered and cheered, while the guys behind me sang “There’s only one Nicklas Bendtner”. Ah, irony.

But that wasn’t it over and done at all. On the way back we listened to “606” a phone in on BBC Radio Five Live. And for once almost the whole show seemed to be about referees. Of course there were the usual “Moyes out” people on, but over and over again they were talking refs.

To be clear they were not talking about persistent bias and low quality overall, but about refs getting things utterly wrong. And yes we have had this in the past, but this time we got it from caller after caller after caller.

Maybe something is stirring in the world of the Premier League.

It was a great day out. The party was good too. We moved the furniture around in Suzanne and Stephen’s sitting room and jived for couple of hours. Ah, memories of youth.

50 comments to Probert gets his act together, maybe we helped, and dancing after midnight.

Absolutely loved the way we played last night. It IS just getting better and better… Giroud is the new chef the village, 2 amazing assists and it seems like he doesn’t mind being the provider instead of the finisher !

Just a note to the ol’ ref thing – if you want to retain some intellectual integrity with the ref watch thing, this is certainly not the way. You cannot put yourself into a position where “reality doesn’t give you and excuse to lose”. If Probert is a biased, crap ref, and it was to be a “We told you so” kind of game – then you should have the integrity to write: “Sorry Probert, you had an ok (albeit not amazing) game”. However, going to this quantom mechanics -Schrodinger’s Cat train of though (we influenced him with the Ref watch, just like observing a particle changes its position in space…) means that the Ref watch conclusions can never be authenticated. When a crap ref has a crap game – “we told you so”, when he has an ok game – “quantom mechanics”.

Propert had a poor game again, he missed several fouls by Norwich in the 2nd half, entirely failed to penalise Pilkington who spent the game manhandling Kos and missed a clear penalty(on Ozil) and a handball just outside the box. Arguably he also failed to notice Flamini’s injury was more serious than it first appeared. Now, given his history this could be bias or it could be incompetence, but he didn’t have a GOOD game and shouldn’t be refereeing at this level until he has undergone some fresh training.

Anyone else notice that the idiot who allowed Chelsea’s first goal was our friend Anthony Taylor? Another one who needs a long rest

It was a joy to watch those goals yesterday. It did feel like the old swash buckling days of Pires, Bergkamp, Henry, Vieira.

I am utterly amazed at how Ramsey has progressed. Someone at Arsenal has spotted that he needed more strength and pace because he has clearly worked on it. It seems like these two missing ingredients, albeit only slight tweaks that were required, have exponentially improved him as a player. Not many people – no one in fact – would have thought that in the early season Ramsey would be arguably the best player in Europe. What a stage he has now against Dortmund. Remember when we wanted Gotze (now departed to Munich)? No thanks, Ramsey is better.

The only concern from yesterday is that we fell apart for a period after Flamini went off. We can’t underestimate how important he is for us. He is a leader and organiser on the pitch and there is no one that can step up to replace him in that regard. It was a good 30-40 minutes where we looked disorganised and slow to close down. We must find a way of keeping our concentration when things turn against us as they invariably will at times through the season.

I agree with you Tony, Jack’s lightning finish was asking for a dodgy offside decision and a note in Walter’s black book.
@blacksheep63,
To be fair, I thought Probert called for the trainers very quickly after the Flamini collision.

Blacksheep63
Yes I noticed Anthony Taylor was back on the roster yesterday.
Now his incompetence has helped Chelsea, maybe his masters will have a chat with him.
very clever by Moe to cause a distraction, he can pretend Taylor was biased AGAINST chelski now.

I dont think it was Probert having a good game, i believe it was Norwich who played football instead of kicking arsenal players legs to pieces that WBA and Aston Villa did, now if they did play so,and fair play to them they didnt, then probert would have come out with his magic touch.
So thank you Norwich for trying to play football even if u lost, good game.

@ Colario – I don’t think you understood what I meant, otherwise, I don’t understand your response. I am not saying he had a good game, you can re-read my post if you wish. What I’m talking about is intellectual integrity and that it doesn’t seem to exist when on the one hand people write a post like “we are going to lose the game because Probert is a biased, shitty ref” and after winning the game without any huge wrong or biased call from Probert, to write something the equals quantom mechanics. Sorry, not in my book.
And to set the record straight – I think that you should have enough common sense not to suggest that I should adopt SAF’s machivellian morals (when I’m the person calling for some integrity).

But doesn’t ‘intellectual integrity’ demand that there is a component of ‘quantum mechanics’ that exists in this respect and needs to be acknowledged? The article also says that it is possible that Untold had nothing to do with the referee performing better. It’s up to you to believe whatever you want to in that regard, since there is no conclusive evidence either way. But to discard that possibility isn’t intellectually honest either.

I think Probert knew he was under the microscope & that he needed to be more careful than normal. But, he did ignore some fouls, a handball and a probable penalty – so I can’t fully agree that he was Ok – just not as blatant as he can be.

But what a performance by the team, some scintillating play which few teams could equal. The trouble is it will be hard to reproduce such play week in week out, so as fans we still need to be patient and enjoy the good moments, such as yesterday, when the occur. Last night there were a lot of ecstatic gooners about!

I find it absolutely amazing that after what was a very entertaining game featuring four spectacular goals( two of which are surely candidates for goal of the season), the main focus still is on the referee.

Yes, Probert missed some calls , again but everybody already knew that he would as he is a poor referee. Demoting the likes of Probert , Taylor and few others is impossible from a numerical stand point if nothing else. There simply wouldn’t be enough referees left to carry the load( unless Walter and his Ref Review panel steps in).

I’m actually glad Probert didn’t give the penalty for the foul on Ozil because Arsenal didn’t need it and we are still top of the league with a negative penalty ratio 0-3 , and the only big club without a penalty awarded to ,left in the Prem. Perhaps we will get one in a game with a smaller goal margin where it can decide the outcome of the game in our favor( little twisted , I know)

Hello Nicky, yes he called them on quick enough but they and him didn’t really spot that MF was concussed (probably the player’s fault as well wanting to solider on!). This is not an attack on Probert per se but officials need to do more about head injuries as recent reports (about rugby) have shown we need to be much more careful. I was sorry to lose Flamini but his health is more improtant.

Yassin makes good points re Norwich’s tactics; they played very well and very fairly, not resorting to time wasting or niggling fouls (Pilkington excepted), make a difference that they’ve sold Grant Holt. However, this should be how football is played and refereed: fouls are fouls

I am not suggesting you should adopt SAF morals on the contrary I am saying the point you make against Untold you should make against SAF because he regularly used the approach Untold made here.

Attempting to prompt a situation his way SAF would often do what what was done here and no one as far as I know approached SAF in the way you approached Untiold.

However what Tony was doing was pointing out the possibility that history would repeat itself with Mr Probart refereeing our game against Norwich. Tony provided us with evidence for his claim. SAF rarely provided evidence for his claims.

Tony has now told us how he saw the game and in particular the ref’s contribution to the game.

If you saw the game differently to Tony fine no problem.

There were 60 000 spectators at the game. It is possible each one saw the game to each other.

@ Colario & Shard – I agree with Tony’s views regarding the game 100%, and I agree that statistics prove ref’s quality and bias. [On a side note: I had a reservation regarding the “table” presentation of refs’ performances and would rather see it as a “go no go” threshold due to the fact that there are quite a few refs who got very similar scores; however in reality it might not change a lot as I think that everybody agrees that there are quite a few refs who are just not good enough.]

My point here was very specific – and it goes to holding the rope at both ends. I don’t think its very honest, nor does it serve Untold’s goal [which to my understanding is to support Arsenal and Arsene all the way] to contend BEFORE the match that we will lose because Probert is a biased incompetent ref, and then when his performance was not THAT bad, credit it to those previously made observations regarding his lack of quality.

And no, I do not believe in quantom mechanics in this regard, sorry. I believe that there are certain amazingly bad refs, and they can have a good day [in their own lowly standards…].

I believe we could all agree that everybody will be very happy to see the ref watch predictions all going down the toilet [i.e., us getting a positive bias for a change :)], and think that the focus should always be on the team rather than the refs.

Now going to focus my thoughts on Villa winning 2-0 in Villa park and Townsend twisting his ankle or something.

Even when we win, with possibly our finest display in years, we get whining about refs. A lot of our poor performances in past years is because our squad has not had the requisite talent. It now has that due to Wenger finding a player of immense potential in Ramsey and finally buying a player of superior stature in Ozil. I imagine the introduction of the latter player is such a morale boost to the team that confidence has risen dramatically. This usually happens when a world class talent is added to a squad.

If you want to moan about refs imagine being a WBA supporter and having a stonewall penalty denied as happened yesterday in their game against Stoke. Poor officiating or bias? I demand an answer!

“Even when we win, with possibly our finest display in years, we get whining about refs.”

Maybe that should tell you that the ‘moaning’ had nothing to do with Arsenal’s results or performances, and everything to do with the performances of the referees.

And yes, it was a great display yesterday. I’m a little short of time these days, so can’t really get involved too much in discussions about our play, but our performance was very enjoyable, and I think it should get even better. Hopefully the likes of Podolski, Walcott and Ox come back soon to join the party.

You don’t have to apologise for holding a view against the ‘you change events by looking at them’ theory. That’s fine. I just feel it is wrong of you to have called it an intellectually dishonest position to hold.

Although I understand your concerns about how the analyses might be interpreted. However, anyone who looks in-depth at Untold’s (and refdecisions’) analyses will know that it’s not just a ‘heads-I-win,Tails-you-lose’ argument for the sake of it.

“Even when we win, with possibly our finest display in years, we get whining about refs.”

This is a rather weak comment – the only person whining is you – due to your misguided perception and inability to differentiate between a comment and a whine.

Further, you have not had any grounds to criticize the team/manager for quite some time (even with your misguided perception) and your comment makes it look as if you are bursting to criticize somebody – anybody!

If the ref made bad calls and we drop points, we are sore losers if we complain. If we win despite the ref’s poor performance, we shouldn’t call them out because ……. well, you know…… Let’s just blame Wenger and our players but leave the poor officials alone.

As I said on another thread we gained more points in the same 8 fixtures last year than this. 24(think I said 9/27 on the other thread) last vs 19 this. Seems the World Class player you convinced wenger to buy has actually took us back a step !!! Thanks for that!!

Rupert Cook,
“Even when we win, with possibly our finest display in years, we get whining about refs. A lot of our poor performances in past years is because our squad has not had the requisite talent.”
The second sentence is not wholly untrue. However there is an element to our poor past performances which has also been down to consistent bias against us from referees as shown by the sterling work undertaken by the Untold group. If we consistently managed to finish top four while suffering this systematic bias, how much better would we have been had it not been present? And how much better would the performances have been safe in the knowledge that we could play our game under the same rules as the opposition?
It is of the utmost importance that this site continues to monitor the performances of the officials as clearly we cannot rely either on the PGMOL or the media to be unbiased arbiters.

Rupert
You will probably find that Hughes blasted the officials for lack of consistency after his team were ‘robbed’ against Fulham two weeks ago. So that may have played on the ref’s mind not to penalise a team that had been denied two stonewall penalties a fortnight ago. The refs do their job with an agenda, like they’re reading from a script or something. It’s naive to think all this is down to poor officiating. That we’re still ‘whining’ at the officials even after our best win shows it’s never been about results or clutching at straws or that kind of thing from us; we just want unbiased refereeing, period.

@ Rupert Cook,
“If you want to moan about refs imagine being a WBA supporter and having a stonewall penalty denied”

Really?
You can start with Yesterday, when we too had a stone wall penalty denied, or u didn’t watch the game?
I cant believe it when throw all the open, hard work that Untold did and just ignore it, no and they too deny it.

Will if we moan about the referees, you used to moan about players, why is it OK to moan for u and we are not, although we moan with facts.

And if Ozil had a great moral boast in the side, why couldn`t you support Untold message last year that we should stay behind the team and not moan about every mistake they did? that too can generate a great moral boost, just look at Ramsey yesterday and tell me what he lacked last season, i tell u, its confidence you and your likes stole.

Wenger has promised he will start spending when it is possible for him to do it, and he fulfilled his promise this summer, now I think its time for an apology. or better, to stand behind the team, and defend them when the refs are out to get us. Thank you Untold for that.

let me do the Aston Villa/ WBA game Scenario for yesterday`s game:
Goal 1:
Wilshere get fouled in the box.
Goal 2:
Cazorla is fouled on the counter, no yellow given.
Goal 3:
Ramsey fouled in the penalty area, again no penalty given.

Now what would u do Rupert if then happened?
Would u go on angry like any Arsenal fan, or would you blame Wenger all the way as always, and say Wilshere shouldn`t have played on the wings?

I’m not an Arsenal fan (I support Southampton) but, oh my, never mind goal of the season, that was genuinely one of the best goals I have ever seen.

I do like Arsenal football club. They have a top, top manager, a fantastic youth development programme, a club philosophy that is unshakable, are sensible with money (and only spend big when absolutely necessary), believe in developing English youth, have a great set of fans and a great identity.

I hope, for the sake of English football, they win the league this season. After only eight games, it’s still early days but just how good can they become? I mean, nobody needs reminding but allow me:

@Rupert — I almost don’t want to add to the pile-on here, but some things that immediately come to mind:

Firstly, I’m in no way monogamous with Arsenal Blogs, and using user names as a guide; I’m not the only one.

I’ve been raving, drooling and joking about the performance yesterday for the last 24 hours; just not here. Normally I would have posted something here yesterday, but after commenting about Adam, there was an urge to stay away for a bit.

24 hours later, it seems reasonable to look beyond the performance for a bit, before starting to look forward to Dortmund on Tuesday.

From my view Probert didn’t do a great job, but the decisions felt fairly flat until we got the second goal (when they were on top). From that point, we got pretty much nothing.

Secondly, we are blessed in the Arsenal community to have so many Blogs, and good ones at that, that there is plenty of specialization. Is there a lot of talk about refs and decisions here? Definitely. To the point of obsession? Maybe 🙂

But we all know that is what we are going to get. Does that mean its all that is being talked about? No. Just a lot of the conversations are being held somewhere else, but often amongst the same people.

Lastly, I agree completely about the West Brom decision yesterday. I’d go further and say the first Chelsea goal was utterly outrageous.

That said, this is an Arsenal Blog and that is where the focus lies. I just cannot see how we should feel unable to discuss the incidents in our games, just because something worse happens elsewhere.

If I was a Cardiff fan I would still be bouncing of the ceiling and using the Cardiff Blogs and community to put as much pressure for change as I could. The thing is that it is down to the Cardiff fans.

That sounds harsh, even selfish, but is said withing the context of Tony, Walter and Co’s work looking at referees across the board, and unless I have missed something, it is the only group to be doing this.

It looks to me as if more and more PL teams are playing attractive, passing football. I would give Arsene Wenger at least some of the credit for this. He has stuck to his guns and played the football he admires even in the face of pressure from this or that quarter. And the result is goals like yesterday. An absolute pleasure to watch – again and again!

I think Untold has done nothing but good in highlighting poor and biased refereeing. Beautiful football is played only with difficulty if refereeing is frequently poor.

@Neil – really liked reading what you wrote. Hopefully other football fans will be enjoying yesterday’s goals as well.

Just a side comment on something I noticed about the UTD v Saints game, you know the one ending in a draw and people are saying and have been saying for a while now, Moyes Out!!!
Sound familiar?
It is cos it is familiar and not just us that have ‘fickle fans’ imagine how it will be come the end of season if they have won nothing and/or didn’t even look like winning anything?
I feel much better now that this ‘Moyes Out’ shyte drum is getting banged harder and not cos it is UTD’s turn but just that it makes us look and feel normal.
One more thing I noticed too, on Football365 the front page is about the draw with saints but on MOTD some commenters said this….

I quote a City fan (onstandby) below..
“MOTD showed all United’s chances and only two of Sotons – Moyes then says Utd were wasteful and should have killed them off, which would all lead anyone not seeing the game to conclude Utd were unlucky, when in fact Soton had 54% possession and 18 chances to Utd’s 12 lol. Agenda? How about some credit for the opposition?”

Fcukwit biased non entity punter alert number 2
Garth crooks team of the weekend, one Gooner, three spuds, no place for Rambo or Jack. Fine that’s his opinion, but running hot on the heels of the Phil Thomson comments, and serial arsenal haters, alan shearer and Hansen on MOTD.
Hansen is retiring, let’s get rid of shearer, he brings absolutely nothing to the art of punditry

Mandy
I haven’t seen his team of the week.lineup but to anyone who knows a thing or two about football half of that team should be from Arsenal. Ramsey, Jack, Ozil & Giroud should definitely be in there. I do feel the media are trying to create another bale at the spuds, their new adopted team, won’t mention any names.

@Mandy Dodd
As far as the BBC is concerned they have lost all credibility. This from Alistair Magowan’s overall poor match report…
‘Again it came from a break near the Arsenal penalty area. Cazorla fed Giroud on the left and Ozil carefully guided the resulting cross past the helpless Ruddy after 58 minutes.’
In the match I saw I got the distinct impression that Giroud crossed from the right not the left as Magowan states.
As regards Crooks, he is an idiot. Apart from the omission of Ramsey or Wilshere how could he select Loris in goal who had bugger all to do against Villa over Norwich’s Ruddy defies any logic. What a pratt and we are paying his wages from our licence fee.
Hang on a minute, which team did Crooks play for?

@Mandy Dodd
As far as the BBC is concerned they have lost all credibility. This from Alistair Magowan’s overall poor match report…
‘Again it came from a break near the Arsenal penalty area. Cazorla fed Giroud on the left and Ozil carefully guided the resulting cross past the helpless Ruddy after 58 minutes.’
In the match I saw I got the distinct impression that Giroud crossed from the right not the left as Magowan states.
As regards Crooks, he is an idiot. Apart from the omission of Ramsey or Wilshere how could he select Loris in goal who had bugger all to do against Villa over Norwich’s Ruddy defies any logic. What a pratt and we are paying his wages from our licence fee.
Hang on a minute, which team did Crooks play for?

Very true mick, agree especially on ruddy over loris. You rightly point out who crooks played for, a lot of them out there in pundit land, in the media, seem to also remember mehir Bose, serial knocker of all things arsenal and Tottenham fan was editor of bbc sport for several years, maybe his influence lives on with motd. Also read recently on another blog that the guy who published adams airbrushed as a donkey was also a media spud….that ended up working well for him didn’t it! This blogger also said they guy who spread the false rumours on wenger before he arrived was the very same media spud. But ultimately, I think all this only puts more pressure on the totts and shows them in an even poorer light when they fail, so try as they might, these guys do them few favours. On motd, time for some proper knowledgable non biased pundits, shearer is an idiot and appears so on a weekly basis